The temples, the arenas, the…
No, it can’t be.
He pulled one of the photographs off the wall. As he studied the familiar crumbling columns, and the large, rectangular pool that sank deep into the earth, a jolt of sensation struck his otherwise lifeless heart.
It was his bathhouse.
The one where Vasilios had turned him.
The same one he’d projected Leo to that first night.
This was not a coincidence. Something bigger was at work, and when he rounded back and saw Leo pushing himself up into a seated position, he knew this human was somehow involved.
Reacting purely on instinct, he was across the room and pinning Leo to the couch with no other thought than to extract the truth from him. With his fingers wrapped around Leo’s throat, he watched him with distrustful eyes, concerned for his own safety for the first time ever.
When Leo coughed and reached for his hand, Alasdair glared down at him, wanting nothing more than to end this new emotion of uncertainty by snapping the man’s neck. But he knew that he wouldn’t.
He was angry. He felt oddly…betrayed.
When their eyes locked and Leo’s mouth opened, Alasdair shoved the photo in his face and demanded, “What is this?”
Leo clawed at his grip, trying desperately to break free, but he was relentless in his pursuit for the truth. He wasn’t going to free him until he knew what the fuck was going on.
“I…I… It’s research.”
“Research?” Alasdair hissed, his face close enough to Leo’s that he could taste the other man’s breath when he gasped. “You said you didn’t know who, or what, I was.”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he thundered, his fangs piercing through his gums.
Leo’s eyes flicked to them, and his heart pounded. “I’m…not,” he said, his voice faltering as he pushed the words through squashed vocal cords.
“Then how do you know of this place? No one knows where I was turned. Yet you have a photo of it taped to your fucking wall.”
The legs trapped between Alasdair’s scissored apart as Leo tried to shift out from under him. But he widened his own and trapped Leo’s between them. Then he pushed him deeper into the tattered couch cushions.
“It’s for the exhibit,” Leo rushed out. “A place we were researching for our exhibit. That’s all. I didn’t, don’t, know anything more.”
The words rang of truth, but the coincidence was too much for him to accept. He didn’t believe that, out of all the destinations, all the ancient ruins, the one place Leonidas was studying happened to be—
“That’s where you were changed…turned into a vampire, isn’t it? That’s what you meant a minute ago?”
Alasdair focused on the man trapped under him, and found that he wanted to tell this stranger everything about himself. But he didn’t dare.
This, what he was doing right now, was dangerous. No matter how many times he told himself that, though, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He felt drawn to Leo in a way he’d only ever felt once in his life, and that realization solidified what he’d been thinking all along.
Leonidas Chapel wasn’t merely a mortal. A mortal couldn’t, and wouldn’t, capture the sole attention of his kind without some kind of…power. Whatever he was, Alasdair had never seen the likes of him, and for that reason alone, Leo was perhaps the biggest danger of all.
LEO KNEW THE smart thing to do was to shut his mouth. But, as he looked up into the fierce face hovering over his own, he wanted to know more.
Alasdair was unlike anybody, or anything, he’d ever come across, and every part of him demanded he learn as much as he could before he vanished—or, worse, decided to kill him after all.
With a tentative hand, he touched one of Alasdair’s high cheekbones, and when he flinched, Leo yanked his hand back.
“How old are you?” he asked, finally voicing the one question he’d been wanting to ask since he’d realized exactly what he was. “You have to be close to—”
“I’m old,” Alasdair said.
“Well, you look no older than your mid thirties.”
The sound Alasdair made was derisive as he shifted his body over the top of his, and it was all Leo could do not to pant. Yeah, he had a vampire practically strangling him, but the weight of Alasdair’s lower body brushing over his cock counteracted the fear coursing through him.
“You’re the one who has been studying me. Why don’t you tell me how old I am?”
Leo stared up at the serious face and the luminescent eyes looking down at him. Alasdair’s emotions were riding him, and he was reacting based solely on his instincts. Instincts that were telling him that, for some reason, little old him was a danger. Alasdair felt threatened and was flexing his power. Something that both terrified and, oddly enough, turned Leo on.
“I’m not studying you. I… We have been working on an exhibit for the museum. That’s just one of the locations we were recreating as a place people used to socialize. For meetings and…well, you know. You were there—can you please let go of my throat?”
Alasdair released his grip and placed his hands on either side of Leo’s head. Then he cocked his head to the side, much the way an animal does when it’s watching its prey try to squirm away, and Leo began to do just that. He tried to move under the body holding him down, but when Alasdair’s brow rose as if his attempt was ridiculous, he quit moving altogether.
“Then you don’t need me to tell you how old I am. You already know.”
Leo glanced at the photo in Alasdair’s fist, now a scrunched-up remnant of its former self, and thought about the date of the image. Ancient Athens 47 BC, and it’s now 2015. So that makes him—
“You’re over two thousand years old.”
“And you know too much.” Then Alasdair vanished.
Leo angled his head and saw him standing in front of his research wall again, his back to him.
“Do you not find this odd?”
Leo stood and pressed his fingers to his forehead. Ever since he’d met Alasdair, his entire world had become a little odd. As in fucked up beyond all things sane.
“Yes. But I never knew your kind existed. So, I mean, is this… Do you find this odd?”
Alasdair turned and regarded him carefully—as if seeing him for the first time. Then he answered, “I do.”
Leo waited, figuring there had to be more than that. Then, realizing what Alasdair was about to do, he sprinted across the room and reached out to grip the vampire’s wrist as he faded, with him in tow, right out of his office.
NO HE FUCKING didn’t.
When Alasdair appeared at the foot of Vasilios’s bed and Leo fell at his feet in a heap, he looked down at the human, completely perplexed.
What does he think he’s doing? And how did he know to grab me at that precise moment? With those and at least ten other questions running through his mind, Alasdair nearly forgot where he’d ended up until the male whose bedroom they were in spoke up.
“Well, well. This is a pleasant surprise.”
Alasdair tore his eyes from Leo long enough to look at the male he’d come in search of. Vasilios was lounging in the center of his monstrous bed, and as usual, clothed or naked, as he currently was, he commanded the room like a king on a throne. When Alasdair took in his bronzed torso and the black silk sheet draped across his waist, his cock stiffened, and his feet wanted to move him in his sire’s direction. It was the same reaction he’d been having for centuries.